Former President Barack Obama is looking to the future to help educate the next set of world leaders.
During a sitdown with Olivia Walton at The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, the 44th President spoke openly about his dreams while in the White House and what he hopes to see come from his Presidential Library, which is set to open in 2026. When asked what he wished his library in Chicago would achieve, Obama had no qualms about his hope for the wave of leaders to come.
“My bet is that all the problems we have right now will be solved if old folks get out of the way and we turn the reins over to this next generation that is coming up, so that they can bring those good old-fashioned American values to new sets of problems,” Obama said.
Referring to himself as “Michelle’s husband,” Obama didn’t hold back when it came to the media as a whole. In fact, he informed the crowd that he made it a habit not to watch cable news and hadn’t done so in well over a decade.
“People said, ‘Mr. President, you always seem so calm. No drama, Obama,” he told the audience about his news consumption, which elicited plenty of laughs. “I don’t watch the news. It’s genuinely true. I haven’t watched cable news in about 15 years …I don’t scroll, I’m old school and I read a pretty wide mix of publications.”
The lengthy conversation covered several topics, from leaders he felt elevated their presence during his time in the White House to one where Obama pondered actual quiet. He recalled a recurring dream he had while serving as the President of the United States, sitting on a bench in solitude with no one demanding his attention or asking him to solve a problem.
“I’d realize at some point that nobody knew who I was, and there was no secret service, and I’d just sit on a bench and sip on a soda pop,” he said. “It was really nice.”
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art launched its new lecture series, “Building Bridges,” with Obama as the first guest speaker on Monday (Dec. 1). The series aims to “celebrate the American spirit of meeting in the middle with curiosity, courage, and care,” something Obama hopes can occur despite the massive political divide in the U.S.
“I think it is true that we are more divided and that our democracy is more unstable than any time in my lifetime,” he said. “Not in American history, I mean, we did have a Civil War … I would not have expected the legitimacy of an election and the peaceful transfer of power to have been challenged. I thought that was not something that would happen today.”
He added, “Our Democracy requires that nobody is above the law, and that as best we can wield it, the power of the state is wielded in an objective way that people can trust … There are norms like that, that have been eroded, actively undermined, in some cases.”
Watch the full conversation below.
